No one knows what the girls said as they drove by Eric, but four days later all three girls were taken to the police station and shown a lot of photographs of different people they didn’t know. Two of the girls picked out Eric and said he was the one who had attacked them. Eric was arrested later the same day.

On January 23, 2004, after being in jail for eight months, Eric finally went to court. From the beginning he had said that he had done nothing wrong and that he knew nothing about the attack on the girls.

On the first day in court, Catili told her story. She answered a lot of questions about what had happened and everyone believed her. That was on a Thursday. The next time the court met, on the following Monday, to his surprise, Eric was told that everything was over and he was free.

Later he learned what had happened. After the first day in court, Catili had told her mother that the girls’ story had been a lie. They had made up the whole thing. There had never been an attack. The girls had never seen Eric before the police showed him to them.

The girls’ reason for making up the story was that they were late coming home and they didn’t want to get into trouble. They needed an excuse for being late.

-information from: The Los Angeles Times, 04.01.30 (Daniel Yi); The Los Angeles Times, 04.02.10 (H.G. Reza, Joel Rubin); The Los Angeles Times, 04.02.12 (Joel Rubin, Christine Hanley); The Los Angeles Times, 04.02.13 (H.G. Reza, Jennifer Mena); The Los Angeles Times, 04.02.23 (H.G. Reza, Christine Hanley, James Ricci);